Human cancers harbor numerous genetic and epigenetic alterations, generating neoantigens potentially recognizable by the immune system (Sjoblom et al., 2006). Although an endogenous immune response to cancer is observed in preclinical models and patients, this response is ineffective, and established cancers are viewed as “self” and tolerated by the immune system. Contributing to this state of tolerance, tumors may exploit several distinct mechanisms to actively suppress the host immune response (Topalian et al., 2011; Mellman et al., 2011). Among these mechanisms, endogenous “immune checkpoints” that normally terminate immune responses to mitigate collateral tissue damage can be co-opted by tumors to evade immune destruction. Intensive efforts to develop specific immune checkpoint pathway inhibitors have begun to provide new immunotherapeutic approaches for treating cancer, including the development of the anti-CTLA-4 antibody (Ab), ipilimumab (YERVOY®), for the treatment of patients with advanced melanoma (Hodi et al., 2010).
Programmed Death-1 (PD-1) is a key immune checkpoint receptor expressed by activated T and B cells and mediates immunosuppression. PD-1 is a member of the CD28 family of receptors, which includes CD28, CTLA-4, ICOS, PD-1, and BTLA. Two cell surface glycoprotein ligands for PD-1 have been identified, Programmed Death Ligand-1 (PD-L1) and Programmed Death Ligand-2 (PD-L2), that are expressed on antigen-presenting cells as well as many human cancers and have been shown to downregulate T cell activation and cytokine secretion upon binding to PD-1 (Freeman at al., 2000; Latchman et al., 2001). Unlike CTLA-4, PD-1 primarily functions in peripheral tissues where activated T-cells may encounter the immunosuppressive PD-L1 (B7-H1) and PD-L2 (B7-DC) ligands expressed by tumor and/or stromal cells (Flies et al., 2011; Topalian et al., 2012a). Inhibition of the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction mediates potent antitumor activity in preclinical models (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,008,449 and 7,943,743), and the use of Ab inhibitors of the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction for treating cancer has entered clinical trials (Brahmer et al., 2010; Flies et al., 2011; Topalian et al., 2012b; Brahmer et al., 2012).
The promise of the emerging field of personalized medicine is that advances in pharmacogenomics will increasing be used to tailor therapeutics to defined sub-populations, and ultimately, individual patients in order to enhance efficacy and minimize adverse effects. Recent successes include, for example, the development of imatinib mesylate (GLEEVEC®), a protein tyrosine kinase inhibitor that inhibits the bcr-abl tyrosine kinase, to treat Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML); crizotinib (XALKORI®) to treat the 5% of patients with late-stage non-small cell lung cancers who express a mutant anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene; and vemurafenib (ZELBORAF®), an inhibitor of mutated B-RAF protein (V600E-BRAF) which is expressed in around half of melanoma tumors. However, unlike the clinical development of small molecule agents that target discrete activating mutations found in select cancer populations, a particular challenge in cancer immunotherapy has been the identification of mechanism-based predictive biomarkers to enable patient selection and guide on-treatment management. Advances in validating PD-L1 expression as a biomarker for screening patients for anti-PD-1 immunotherapy are described herein.